BBC History Magazine

MICHAEL WOOD ON...

“Behind the debate hovered one question: what is it to be human?”

’m reading Camilla Townsend’s which won the 2020 Cundill Prize, the biggest literary prize anywhere for history. A boldly imaginative attempt to tell the story of the Aztecs from indigenous sources, it raises fascinating issues. The Spanish conquest of the Americas opened up the world, marking the beginnings of a globalisation that was not only commercial, but also ideological and philosophical. For the first

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